BT Sorry for Two Week Broadband and Phone Outage in Cheltenham UK

BT has apologised to around 1,600 homes and businesses in Cheltenham (Gloucestershire, England) after an attempted cable theft from under a manhole cover in Bath Parade resulted in many premises being left without broadband and phone services for two weeks.

It’s understood that the thieves climbed underground to cut two vital cables on 27th March 2013, which ended up seriously damaging services in Bath Parade, Prestbury and some other parts of the Charlton Kings area (e.g. Chancel Way). BT claims that its engineers have been “working around the clock” to resolve the situation but naturally locals remain very angry (here).

A Spokesperson for BTOpenreach told ISPreview.co.uk:

“BT would like to apologise to all those affected by the attempted cable theft in Bath Parade Cheltenham at the end of last month. Police were notified after it became apparent that the thieves had cut through two big underground cables serving customers in the Prestbury area.

Engineers have been working around the clock in difficult conditions to reconnect every line and the last customers had service restored yesterday. Any customer still experiencing a problem with their line should contact their service provider.”

It should be stressed that not everybody was left without a connection for two weeks and some were reconnected after 3-5 days, although that still represents a significant outage. The issue also affected other ISPs that serve the area, such as customers of Sky Broadband and TalkTalk. Sadly ISPreview.co.uk understands that some lines are still waiting to be reconnected.

Metal theft remains a serious problem for the telecoms market and other industries, such as transport (railways etc.), although new rules (here) and recent statistics suggest (here) that the security forces and ISPs are getting much better at tackling it.